My Watch List: VTI – Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF

Total Stock Market

The Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (Ticker: VTI) has been added to my Watch List.

VTI tracks about 95% of the top U.S. common stocks, totalling over 1,200 different US stocks. The stocks VTI tracks cover all U.S. markets: NYSE, AMEX, Nasdaq and OTCBB stocks.

Advantages of VTI

VTI is very diversified and when you buy the VTI ETF, you’re buying a small piece of over 1,200 different stocks in the US stock markets. VTI offers a long term, low volatility play for investing. When the markets go up, VTI will go up.

Disadvantages of VTI

Being very diversified, you may miss out on gains from investing in invidual stocks. VTI holding are very spread out, which means your total return on VTI will be about the market average. You shouldn’t expect to sigificantly “beat the market” with VTI. When the markets go down, VTI will also go down.